I liked the part when Ringo was like "I'm going to Soul Hack". And um. Uhh. There's honestly no punchline she actually said that in game and it was pretty funny.

I wanna quickly preface this by saying I have only played Persona 3, 4, and 5 and the only experience I have had with it's father series Shin Megami Tensei is through trailers and watching a bit of gameplay. (I'm sorry, I wanna play Soul Hackers 1, Nocturne, SMT 4 and 5. I hope my sins are forgiven).

Alright so Soul Hackers 2. I remember hearing about this game way back in 2022, because of a somewhat infamous scene where the main protagonist is seen verbally retaliating a rapper with """cringe""". Frankly I thought this specific line was one of the funniest things I had ever seen a MegaTen protagonist ever say out loud and I was instantly sold on the game. It's "cringe", yes, but it's good "cringe". It's funny, however this itself was not enough for me to pick it up the game on release day. Then the game came out and I had heard a lot of middling to very negative things about it. I remember the review bombing on this site with this game in particular. All of this made me want to pick up the game and see why so many people were so negative about it. Having played the game now over a year after it's release, I can understand why people may not have liked this one. However, it also does not deserve the insane hate it has gotten either.

Soul Hackers 2 is a game with an identity crisis.

This is all speculation on my end so take it with a grain of salt. ATLUS saw the flourishing popularity of the Persona series with Persona 5 and especially it's expanded rerelease Persona 5 Royal and wanted to create a MegaTen game that would be easier for Persona fans to ease into while also having something for the original MegaTen fans to get excited about. A sequel to the original Devil Summoner game on the PS1/3DS? Sounds awesome right? However, from what I've seen of Soul Hackers 1, it's not a direct sequel and takes specific ideas from the Devil Summoners games such as characters and groups but not much else.

Think like how Final Fantasy does it's games aside from dedicated sequels. It has recurring characters such as Madam Ginko and Dr. Victor, and character groups such as the Yatagarasu and Phantom Society which were present in Soul Hackers 1, but not much else. Unfortunately, by trying to appeal to everyone, they have appealed to no one. That and it's major lack of advertising, and middling perception from review outlets and negative response from players, made this game just kind of come and go from buildup to release. It's why you can regularly find the game physically for less than twenty dollars and that's how I picked it up. I was actually able to get the pre-order bonus character cards included when I picked it up a few months ago. That's not a good sign...

I suppose I'll start out with the story. The story follows two Aion, (sentient lifeforms but not humans that are born of the collective data from digital networks), that are born with the purpose to prevent the end of the world. That's the CliffNotes of it and there's obviously way more to it, but this is a spoiler free review so I won't go much into it. I thought it was somewhat predictable at times, but are a number of times where I was taken for a loop as well. Overall, it's a fine story. Not amazing or anything, but not terrible. It was engaging enough for me to finish the game and see the ending through, so I suppose that's a plus. I cannot say the same for the gameplay however...

Soul Hackers 2's combat is... boring. It's very boring. It's turn based, but there's just not much to it. It feels like a "whale on the enemy until it dies" type of game. Adding demons to the stack and trying to get the highest number stack possible is very satisfying no doubt, but other than that it's not very engaging at all. This is all accentuated by the game's poor dungeon design.

The dungeons in this game are so visually bland. It would have been extremely easy to get lost without the in-game map. There aren't a lot of differentiators between where you are and when and it just makes a lot of it blend in. The only dungeon that looked distinctly different was the last dungeon in the game which had an ethereal feel to it. Don't even get me started on the Soul Matrix though.

These are distinct dungeons for the party members and to get to learn more about them and make them stronger, you have to trudge through this boring ass area that once again are not visually distinct for the characters. It sucks because the characters are the best part of this game but I'll get to that later. I have genuinely fallen asleep playing this section of the game it is that boring. The first three floors are fine but it feels like when it comes the fourth and fifth floors they just gave up on designing anything fun. Portals. Portals everywhere. It's not fun in the slightest and it is extremely easy to lose progress. After seeing the character's conclusions on the fourth floor I wanted to see if there was anything interesting on the fifth floor. Nope. Did not do a single soul matrix beyond that point.

Moving on from that, let's talk about the cast of characters. One of the most redeeming qualities of this game is having a protagonist that isn't silent. Ringo is full of sassy, spunky, energy and I'm absolutely in love with her. Megan Taylor Harvey hit it out of the park with her performance of the character. She's easily one of my favorite Megaten protags and honestly one of my favorite protagonists ever. She's a really neat and funny character. That doesn't mean the other characters didn't do great either. I loved everyone. I'm much happier with an adult cast rather than what I'm used to.

Figue, the other purple-haired Aion, acts as a Navigator for the group and kind of provides a motherly support for the team. She's rather soft spoken and is more emotionally charged than Ringo. She's a great buffer for a lot of Ringo's shenanigans. Arrow, working for the Yatagarasu group, is your everyday man. I almost feel like at times he was supposed to be the protagonist given how basic he is. I still liked him just not as much as the other two in the gang. Milady, of the Phantom Society, is a cold hearted assassin who's not one to mince words. She's scary when she's mad but also has a bit of a soft side to her when exposed. It's very cute and I like her a lot. Saizo's my goat though. A freelance devil summoner, dressed to impress, with a chill attitude and some witty one-liners. If it weren't for Ringo, he'd definitely be my favorite of the major characters. They all don't have great chemistry with each other or anything and oftentimes have conflicting ideals making them interesting to watch/listen to. The game is almost fully voice acted, by the way, which I did not expect. I really hope the actors were paid fairly for their work.

One thing I have not touched upon much is the music. It's uh.. alright. The soundtrack was not done by Meguro or the Persona sound teams. It was done by Keiichi Okabe mostly known for Tekken and Dragenkard OSTs under the guise MONACA. Under that alias, I found a number of anime soundtracks including The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Monogatari and it's subsequent series', and Black Butler just to name a few. Kinda forgettable at times but there are still some good tracks in there. The Boss Battle theme is really good and I especially liked the themes that play when you're at the COMP Smith, and Bar Heidrun. However the dungeon music is some of the most repetitive ambience sounding music ever. It's worse than Mementos' theme in my opinion. The problem mostly being that they play the same music for almost every damn dungeon. Why? Once again the only time they change it up is at the final dungeon. If the music was actually catchy this would be a nonissue but unfortunately here we are.

I thought graphically the game is fine, and it ran well on the PlayStation 5. There are some really ugly sections of the game, mostly having to do with it's dungeons, but I loved the look of the Mansei Realm, and Shinsando. I got a consistent sixty frames per second all throughout though so I'm not complaining too much, and I don't really care TOO much for graphics in my video games.

Finally let's talk about updates and DLC. First of all, I can't fucking believe they shipped this game out without a Dash feature in the dungeons. If I had played this back when the game came out it, dungeon exploration would have been GLACIAL. The fast battle option in battles is really damn nice too. Made battles that would have lasted way too damn long really quick at times. Good feature. Day one DLC is still something we have to deal with when it comes to ATLUS' titles unfortunately. They shipped out a bonus demon pack, item pack, costume + BGM pack, and a whole damn side story the same day the game released. These are really scummy practices as you can tell, they could have easily put these into the game creating a complete experience. But why do that when there's extra cash to be made? Bullshit. I hate it. They better not pull this crap with Metaphor Re:Fantazio.

Overall I hope you can see why this game has such middling perception. The story's pretty good, characters are great, music is alright, but the gameplay is just... lacking. By calling this game "Soul Hackers 2", they alienated fans of the original by altering some things that are just not MegaTen such as the gameplay and progression and confusing the consumer by calling it a sequel. Suddenly questions start to go through their head. "Do I have to play the first Soul Hackers to completely understand everything in this game?" among others. It's a real damn shame this game did as badly as it did as it stops ATLUS from taking more chances with Megami Tensei and focusing a lot more on Persona. And I love the Persona games, but I wanna see and play more of what MegaTen has to offer.

With the 50 hours I've spent on this game, despite it all, I enjoyed what I played but cannot recommend it to hardcore MegaTen fans. It's kinda difficult to recommend this game to anyone really. Ringo still cute though, I'd let her soul hack me any day.

tldr:
Story was pretty good. Entertaining throughout. Gameplay boring grr. Great Characters with sweet cringegirl swag Ringo being a standout. Music was alright. Graphics are fine, but not great in some areas. Game overall is fine. Not amazing, but not terrible.